Square Enix Cracks Down On Dragon Quest X Gold Sales

When you have a popular online game people are going to find a way to sell virtual money. The inevitable cat and mouse game has begun in Dragon Quest X and Square Enix’s first move is banning gold traders.

At the end of October, Square Enix did an investigation and identified accounts selling digital gold. These players had their accounts closed forever and their gold repossessed. Altogether, Square Enix stopped 19.2 million gold from being sold. Huh, I wonder if this is where King Slimes get their gold from…

Gold in Dragon Quest X can be used to purchase weapons and land. You can build your own house and invite friends over.

More likely, they will delete it in order to remove it from circulation. Inflation is a BIG issue when it comes to MMOs, since gold is essentially produced out of thin air, so it’s something they need to try to keep in check as much as possible.

Square Enix really didn’t handle RMT (Real Money Trading) very well in Final Fantasy XI, and their efforts to ban and prevent sales often hurt legitimate players’ experience. Much like we see with publishers and DRM, efforts to hurt the bad apples often harm legitimate players, while the rule-breakers just adapt to stay one step ahead anyway.

Unfortunately, I’m also not exactly confident in Square Enix’s more recently demonstrated ability (inability?) to learn those lessons. Anti-RMT efforts were a big reason for FFXIV’s colossal failure. Many of that game’s major design flaws that made it such a flop are directly rooted in core design philosophies that had an obsessive fixation on battling RMT. Harsh quest limits, bizarre economy system (retainers, no auction house), and even the sluggish menu performance (due to the decision to process everything server-side, which SE even stated to be an anti-RMT measure) are due to this focus.

To be fair, FFXI and XIV had one big thing in common: director Hiromichi Tanaka (who got booted from XIV after the catastrophic launch). Tanaka reaaaaaaly hated RMT and had a maniacal focus on getting rid of it at all costs. It’s notable that RMT-related issues got a lot better in FFXI when he was gone working on the XIV launch. For one, having the game focus more on items you can only get by doing in-game tasks as opposed to just buying them. Removes the incentive to buy/sell in-game currency.

Or you could take a page from some other developers’ book (notably Blizzard with Diablo III), and legitimize RMT as a game feature. If you can’t beat em, join em.

Square Enix really didn’t handle RMT (Real Money Trading) very well in Final Fantasy XI, and their efforts to ban and prevent sales often hurt legitimate players’ experience. Much like we see with publishers and DRM, efforts to hurt the bad apples often harm legitimate players, while the rule-breakers just adapt to stay one step ahead anyway.

Unfortunately, I’m also not exactly confident in Square Enix’s more recently demonstrated ability (inability?) to learn those lessons. Anti-RMT efforts were a big reason for FFXIV’s colossal failure. Many of that game’s major design flaws that made it such a flop are directly rooted in core design philosophies that had an obsessive fixation on battling RMT. Harsh quest limits, bizarre economy system (retainers, no auction house), and even the sluggish menu performance (due to the decision to process everything server-side, which SE even stated to be an anti-RMT measure) are due to this focus.

To be fair, FFXI and XIV had one big thing in common: director Hiromichi Tanaka (who got booted from XIV after the catastrophic launch). Tanaka reaaaaaaly hated RMT and had a maniacal focus on getting rid of it at all costs. It’s notable that RMT-related issues got a lot better in FFXI when he was gone working on the XIV launch. For one, having the game focus more on items you can only get by doing in-game tasks as opposed to just buying them. Removes the incentive to buy/sell in-game currency.

Or you could take a page from some other developers’ book (notably Blizzard with Diablo III), and legitimize RMT as a game feature. If you can’t beat em, join em.

CirnoLakes

As much as I can see how RMT trading, especially of the obnoxious, global chat using variety, can harm a game experience.

On the other hand, I can completely sympathize with the idea. And you can’t really stop the idea of how in game work is worth real life money. Making it impossible to be worth real world money without breaking the rules isn’t the answer. In fact the idea that your work in game is worth real world money is probably a good sign. I honestly think that most online game companies should go the route of Diablo III and regulate it. Rather than outright banning and punishing any possibility of it and telling players, “no, your in game work and accomplishments did not happen in the real world, they don’t exist, this is just a game, and they aren’t worth jack.”

Apparently, they are. And it says a lot about the value of a game if a player’s work alone in game is worth money.

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